The US military has vowed to step up its efforts against sexual violence
within its ranks after a Pentagon report that showed more than 70 assaults
on service members a day.

Around 26,000 members of the armed services are estimated to have been sexually assaulted in the last year, a sharp rise from 19,000 incidents recorded two years ago.

The report by the US Department of Defense come days after a senior officer responsible for preventing sexual assault in the Air Force was arrested and charged with drunkenly attacking a woman in a Virginia parking lot.

President Barack Obama called the findings an "an outrage" and said "we have to exponentially step up our game" in order to curb the widespread violence before women become more integrated into frontline combat roles.

The Pentagon report found that 12,000 - or six per cent - of the US military's 203,000 women on active duty had been victims of unwanted sexual contact in 2012. Of those, around 4,000 reported they had been forced to have sex against their will.

Just over 1 per cent of men reported they had been assaulted, according to the survey, which was filled out anonymously to encourage honesty.

Related Articles

The findings appeared to indicate that despite greater public focus on the issue of sexual violence in the military, many victims still feel too afraid to come forward.

A separate report found that only 2,949 troops had reported sexual assaults in 2012, a fraction of the number who anonymously claimed to have suffered them. That was a six per cent rise in the rate of reporting since 2011.

The issue was thrown into sharp relief earlier this week by the arrest of Lt Col Jeffrey Krusinski, the newly-appointed head of the Air Force's Sexual Assault and Response Programme.

Krusinski, 41, was taken into custody in the early hours of Sunday morning after he allegedly "approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks," according a police report.

A mugshot released by the Arlington Police Department shows scratches and cuts on his face from the woman's struggle to fight him off. He has since been removed from his post.

Asked about the apparently sharp rise in military sexual assaults during his presidency, Mr Obama angrily promised fresh action and said "whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they're wearing".

"We're going to have to not just step up our game, we have to exponentially step up our game, to go at this thing hard," Mr Obama said. "If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable - prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonourably discharged."

Commanders are grappling with the question of sexual assault at the same time as they are beginning to implement Pentagon orders to end the ban on female troops serving in frontline combat roles.

By 2016, hundreds of thousands of posts will be open to women, including potentially positions in elite special forces units.

The US Air Force in particular has been marred by sexual assault scandals in recent years. Last year, the service was left reeling by allegations from dozens of female cadets at a Texas Air Force base, who claimed to been attacked by male trainers.

More than 30 of the trainers were removed from their posts and so far five have been convicted of various sexual misconduct crimes.